Traditionally, testing and debugging features are associated with an operating system (OS) or administrative tools associated with a system. That is, testing and debugging features usually include low-level operations, which are reserved and geared toward skilled engineers who are adept in such processing.
However, it is not usually the skilled engineers that encounter problems with software services; it is usually a more-conventional end-user of the software services that encounters problems. Consequently, there is a certain amount of interfacing and manual communication that is often required between an end-user and an engineer when problems arise with a software service. In some cases, the exact state of a problem cannot be recreated or even remembered by an end-user, such that problem resolution becomes extremely difficult for the engineer who is trying to resolve the problem. Furthermore, a time lag is experienced before an end-user can experience resolution to his/her problems; this time lag can be expensive in time critical situations.
In another situation, a software service may include a number of sub services, such that when a particular sub service is upgraded an entire suite of test operations are performed on the upgraded sub service for purposes of validating the upgrade before it is placed in production for the software service. Often, these test operations are manually performed within the software service and are not recorded for subsequent reuse. Thus, when a sub service is upgraded a second time, the entire process is repeated from scratch. This is a waste of valuable resources and time within an enterprise and is fraught with the potential for manually introduced errors.
In still other related scenarios, an end user may want to interact with a software service for purposes of performing a number of repetitive tasks. Each task may entail several hundred independent actions within the software service. The software service may not be designed to support batch processing, such that scripts could automate these repetitive tasks. Consequently, the end user manually records each independent action for a first task, and then manually interacts with the software service to process all the independent actions for each different task by using what was previously transcribed as a guide. This is also time consuming and is also prone to manually introduced errors when the end user inadvertently performs a wrong action within the software service.
Accordingly, it can be seen that conventional software services lack sufficient testing and debugging features.